Ohhhhhhhh... FEVAHHHH!!
Patapon 2 is quite literally better than its predecessor in every way. Let us tell you how.
Published: April 30, 2009
Patapon 2 is the perfect title for Sony to lead their charge to move all their PSP efforts online. They claim it's something of an experiment, but one of the worst-kept secrets in the industry, the introduction of a new, UMD-less PSP, necessitates a downloadable version of all games to begin with, and the follow-up to a tragically under-appreciated rhythm-strategy game is a wonderful way to show how it's done. That there won't even be a physical copy of the game (making my UMD version all the more valuable to me) is perhaps more surprising than the act of moving games online, but nevertheless, it makes a ton of sense.
Patapon didn't garner either the kind of critical nor retail reception that it should have. Japanese development house Pyramid managed to blend two seemingly polar-opposite genres, real-time strategy and rhythm action into something that was wholly unique. The idea that you could use simple patterned button presses to guide an entire army sounds incredibly difficult at best and almost dense to those that haven't tried it. In practice, though, the system of using the face buttons and pressing them in time with aural and visual cues worked beautifully.
An adroit adherence to the rhythm and an, at times, unforgiving window for logging button presses all but ensured the game could never be played other than in a quiet room with headphones and with zero in the way of distractions. Nobody talking to you, nothing else on to pull away your focus and god help you if you ever had to pause the game for some reason: the game doesn't even have a pause function.
Nor does the sequel for that matter, but I can understand the reasoning behind it. In the middle of a boss fight, keeping the flow of commands up is absolutely crucial later in the game, and the ability to interrupt that would make the game far more difficult than it would help players. It probably sounds like blasphemy to even suggest that a game shouldn't allow the player to pause it, but just about everything else that made the first game a bit of an uphill climb has been softened and graded to ease newcomers into things without neglecting those that already know what's up.
For starters, the game defaults to the easiest difficulty level, which shortens the amount of more or less dead-on button presses in time to the rhythm to reach the all-important Fever Mode, which boosts attack and defense levels for all units and open up special attacks for your main hero Pon. The window itself is also widened quite a bit, and short of completely missing a beat, you'll usually get a warning while in Fever Mode to let you know another poorly timed series of presses will end Fever.
Given that most of the boss fights in the game (which can feel like they last tens of minutes at times, again necessitating the need to keep going without the interruption a pause function would facilitate) require staying in Fever Mode, this relaxing of the timing means things can be enjoyed more causally. Of course, if you want to enjoy the game in Patapon 1 mode, you're welcome to bump up the difficulty, though it'll require a surgeon's concentration and steady hand to get through.
Gone too is the game's sense of perma-death, replaced by Pons that will revive after you've scooped up their hats and plant them at the Tree of Life where you can also now upgrade them individually. Using the same system of garnering resources from both the little mini-games that crop up at your home base and in the levels themselves, it's possible to now both evolve and mature Pons to build their resistances to elemental attacks and, eventually, to give them unique attacks. It's an incredibly infectious and deviously simple system, and one that actively invites a bit of farming and grinding without making it absolutely necessary.
Few things are as satisfying, though, as spending a few hours to mine resources, evolve and upgrade your armies, equip them with new bits of armor and weapons and then head back to take on a boss monster from the past and utterly rock their faces in a matter of seconds rather than minutes. It's even more satisfying when you realize that these boss monsters will grow more difficult and drop better items with each successive trip into their levels. It's Patapon 2's careful tiptoeing of the line between being needlessly grind-heavy and being too easy that makes it all so addictive. I'd liken it to the kind of itch I get when playing the Disgaea series, though without the payoff of doing billions of points of damage in ridiculous attacks.
Patapon didn't garner either the kind of critical nor retail reception that it should have. Japanese development house Pyramid managed to blend two seemingly polar-opposite genres, real-time strategy and rhythm action into something that was wholly unique. The idea that you could use simple patterned button presses to guide an entire army sounds incredibly difficult at best and almost dense to those that haven't tried it. In practice, though, the system of using the face buttons and pressing them in time with aural and visual cues worked beautifully.
An adroit adherence to the rhythm and an, at times, unforgiving window for logging button presses all but ensured the game could never be played other than in a quiet room with headphones and with zero in the way of distractions. Nobody talking to you, nothing else on to pull away your focus and god help you if you ever had to pause the game for some reason: the game doesn't even have a pause function.
Nor does the sequel for that matter, but I can understand the reasoning behind it. In the middle of a boss fight, keeping the flow of commands up is absolutely crucial later in the game, and the ability to interrupt that would make the game far more difficult than it would help players. It probably sounds like blasphemy to even suggest that a game shouldn't allow the player to pause it, but just about everything else that made the first game a bit of an uphill climb has been softened and graded to ease newcomers into things without neglecting those that already know what's up.
For starters, the game defaults to the easiest difficulty level, which shortens the amount of more or less dead-on button presses in time to the rhythm to reach the all-important Fever Mode, which boosts attack and defense levels for all units and open up special attacks for your main hero Pon. The window itself is also widened quite a bit, and short of completely missing a beat, you'll usually get a warning while in Fever Mode to let you know another poorly timed series of presses will end Fever.
Given that most of the boss fights in the game (which can feel like they last tens of minutes at times, again necessitating the need to keep going without the interruption a pause function would facilitate) require staying in Fever Mode, this relaxing of the timing means things can be enjoyed more causally. Of course, if you want to enjoy the game in Patapon 1 mode, you're welcome to bump up the difficulty, though it'll require a surgeon's concentration and steady hand to get through.
Gone too is the game's sense of perma-death, replaced by Pons that will revive after you've scooped up their hats and plant them at the Tree of Life where you can also now upgrade them individually. Using the same system of garnering resources from both the little mini-games that crop up at your home base and in the levels themselves, it's possible to now both evolve and mature Pons to build their resistances to elemental attacks and, eventually, to give them unique attacks. It's an incredibly infectious and deviously simple system, and one that actively invites a bit of farming and grinding without making it absolutely necessary.
Few things are as satisfying, though, as spending a few hours to mine resources, evolve and upgrade your armies, equip them with new bits of armor and weapons and then head back to take on a boss monster from the past and utterly rock their faces in a matter of seconds rather than minutes. It's even more satisfying when you realize that these boss monsters will grow more difficult and drop better items with each successive trip into their levels. It's Patapon 2's careful tiptoeing of the line between being needlessly grind-heavy and being too easy that makes it all so addictive. I'd liken it to the kind of itch I get when playing the Disgaea series, though without the payoff of doing billions of points of damage in ridiculous attacks.
